The head of the World Bank: the blockchain potential must be used

Blockchain has enormous potential that the World Bank must use if it intends to keep up with innovative technologies. This opinion was expressed by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, speaking at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and world banks.

Kim drew attention to the feasibility of using the blockchain to combat corruption and poverty, as well as to improve wealth in general.

"We talked about cryptocurrencies, but we think distributed ledger has huge potential and we issued the first blockchain bond in August, where we created, allocated, transferred and managed the entire bond through blockchain technology." he recalled.

After positive experiments with the blockchain, World Bank Treasurer Arunma Oteh said that the bank will continue to look for ways to use new technologies in order to make capital markets safer and more efficient.

Kim added that the use of the blockchain has allowed the World Bank to reduce paperwork and costs, which can be extremely useful in the future.

It is noteworthy that the President of the World Bank previously criticized the "derivatives" of the blockchain - digital currencies. Last year, Kim noted the risks associated with their use.

"Blockchain technology is something that everyone is excited about, but we have to remember that Bitcoin is one of the very few instances [of blockchain's use in currency]. And the other times when blockchain was used they were basically Ponzi schemes, so it's very important that if we go forward with it, we're sure that it's not going to be used to exploit." he stressed.

According to Kim, the goal of the World Bank is to create universal access to financial services by 2020, which, in his opinion, is impossible to achieve without deeper interaction with the technological world.